“Since its inception, Parkett has asserted itself as one of the best publications on contemporary art available today. It is one of those rare periodicals that does not resemble a magazine. The quality of its operations and topicality of its discussions combine to make Parkett both a luxurious and necessary publication.”
Centre Georges Pompidou【1】 (more…)

With a PhD in economics, Dieter von Graffenried founded Parkett magazine in 1984 in Zurich, and has been its publisher ever since. Always deeply involved in Parkett’s projects with artists, he has also been co-Chairman of the Swiss Institute in New York, among other roles. As one of the very first bilingual art magazines to have attempted to bridge the art worlds of Europe and in America and with an in-depth approach in close collaboration with top international artists, Parkett now stands as an essential archive of contemporary art and, with the commissioned works (‘editions’), a musée-appartement that tours museums and institutions worldwide. (more…)

The hand-held projector modified by Kao Chung-Li is constituted of an old cassette as its structure. The viewer sees 8mm film by operating the handle. Courtesy――Tina Keng Gallery, EX!T Experimental Media Art Festival in Taiwan. Copyright――Kao Chung-Li

‘［…］here, if we regard the visual culture of image as an arena for struggles, never follow the rhythm and the pace of other competitors : such passivity is the curse for which one is bound to be won over and colonized.’

“As Franke states, the show addresses the need to “break free from the ‘frame’ of colonial modernity and its narratives, its way of describing the world, and the need to tell different histories of modernity (… ) ”. He writes, “The idea is to make an exhibition that shifts between fiction and historical analysis, just as the identity, or face of the ‘monster’ in this exhibition constantly changes.” (1) The entire repertoire consists of contributions from around 43 artists (a third of the works were commissioned for the Biennial) and several “mini-museums.” It features some of the most interesting Taiwanese artists such as Kao Chung-Li (高重黎) whose “Taste of Human Flesh,” an audio-visual installation with slide show and audio cassette, reveals the story of his father who got shot during the civil war in China around 1948. The work employs a mixture of images including archival photos, footage, hand-drawn animation; the work is narrated from the point of view of the bullet that remains inside the father’s body, voicing an overall criticism on the political and economic mutations which are brought on in times of war, colonization and globalization. (2)”

Extract :
“A Symptomatic Mirror
In his curatorial statement Franke writes, “The systemic aspect of modernity is willfully ignorant of culture and human relations, and this is its strength, and its anonymous monstrosity.” The Taipei Biennial 2012 represented an attempt to disclose the multiple incarnations of the monster of modernity that lie under the masks of rationality, progress, culture, or, in their more advanced and elaborated forms, as colonialism, internationalism, neoliberalism, and globalization. Each of the works and the Mini-Museums in the show tackled a certain aspect of the monstrosity, as if holding up a symptomatic mirror that revealed the processes, causes, and possible fictions around the great myth called modernity.”

“I wouldn’t say my work is autobiographical. My illegal experiences in the States did make me consider those who live at the bottom of society. I intended to transform this consideration into a philosophical approach. A person living at the bottom might show his pains and his resentments politically. But as an artist, he should have the ability to transform basic living conditions into art works in which to ponder life, art and being.”––Tehching Hsieh *

(Quote from Out of Now. The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh, co-authored by Adrian Heathfield, Tehching Hsieh, etc. MIT Press, 2008.)

Internationally renowned Israeli filmmaker, Amos Gitaï (1950~), began to make films in the seventies. The battle in Kippour, Israelin1973 represented the turning point of his life : Gitaï survived miraculously after his helicopter was shot down. He described the experience in his feature filmKippour(2000). In the same way, the history of and the political situation in Europe as well as those of Israel and the life of the exiled become the motif of his documentaries and feature films (Gitaï himself has lived in Paris in the eighties and returned to live in his homeland, Israel in the nineties).(more…)

The art of carpets has a great influence on the art of the 20th Century : the fauvism and abstract art were inspired by Islamic rug art and foregrounded the visual effects produced by the flatness of carpets, the harmonious repetitions and variations of their patterns or their decorative characteristic. Such concepts are based on the assumption that the carpet represents a flat and abstract surface. (more…)